Applied Final Project "The Cultural Other"
- Research the history and traditions of a culture that is of special interest to you. You may research the arts, musical traditions, literature, significant historical events, and religions of your chosen culture.
- Armed with this background, create a portfolio of an invented person from that culture. The result will be a case study.
- Decide on the age, gender, socioeconomic class, family situation, and community role of the individual, as well as a personal crisis the individual has involving culture.
- Write up the case study. Include a key historical event that has some influence on the case.
Suggested format, ideas and examples
Again, this is SUGGESTED, TO HELP YOU TO FORM YOUR PAPER, NO formal format, since I like class member to have the chance to be creative, but here is a suggested format for those who do better with structure. You can use if you like, or form your own. The examples are meant to serve as supplemental material/samples.
A good way to look at it is if you were writing the biography of a person from another culture. Only instead of just fiction, you would, like a science fiction author, use actual material, facts and data as well.
So, suppose you are writing up a 'case study' or narrative, about (hypothetically) Ms A from country B. You first research about country B from reliable sources (library, academic journals, sites we have used in class, just not web travel sites or other less academic sources).
Introduction: About county B, and person A, in a few lines. For the person, report (and keep in mind while writing) age, gender, socioeconomic class, family situation, and community role of the individual. For country B, look into arts, musical traditions, literature, significant historical events, and religions of B.
Para 2: A's early life and upbringing as a part of her culture. 1-2 Aspects of culture can go here
Para 3: young adulthood of person, a personal/historic crisis: say, she falls in love with someone but the norm is arranged marriage, or the country is invaded, family member becomes victim of domestic violence, becomes suicidal, etc. How person is helped (or not) by her society members, professionals, support groups (UN or WHO starts Women's group to help etc).
Para 4: How she overcomes these issues as a part of her culture, perhaps becomes a leader among the women of her tribe, relationship to culture here again-changing world, changing values, etc.
Para 5: Conclusion on how A is doing now, lessons learned, her life in perspective, importance of her culture to her wellbeing, challenges, and how she learns how to thrive(via education, art, literature, internet, etc).
References
Just as an example, A might be a young girl student whose life is changed by education, etc. when something like Barefoot college comes to her village.
https://www.barefootcollege.org/solutions/education-solutions/
Or A could be a grandmother, who lived all her challenging life in a small village, but whose life changed when she was given a chance to provide light via solar panels to her community, and enriching her culture.
https://www.barefootcollege.org/solutions/solar-solutions/
Or A could be a man who lived in a country where he saw social and cultural issues at work, and chose to become a humanitarian hero.
https://www.who.int/mediacentre/commentaries/everyday-humanitarians/en/
https://www.who.int/mediacentre/events/2015/world-humanitarian-day/tributes/en/
The above are just examples; you can create your own, just make sure you check the rubric and provide reliable references.